In the 14th Century, when the Black Plague, or Black Death as it was also known, swept out of Asia and consumed most of Europe, its source was unknown and its 75 million victims died helplessly. Today, antidepressants are the 21st Century's Black Plague, but we know the source - Big Pharma - and we know the cure - medical drug detox and increased awareness of the dangers of psychoactive prescription drugs.

We call antidepressants the new Black Plague because millions of people worldwide already have fallen victim to the drugs, and tens of thousands already have died, killed others, or had their lives ruined. And there is no end in sight - the plague continues to spread across the globe, and emergency wards and drug detox facilities continue to handle the mess as best they can.

No amount of PR from Big Pharma about the "benefits" of psychoactive medications alters these facts. Big Pharma hid for years the real and known dangers of antidepressants, and somehow still manages to keep prescribing physicians from looking at the real situation. Even testimonials from patients who claim to have been helped cannot alter the fact that antidepressants are this century's new plague, and the thousands of victims who have survived to complete drug detox would certainly attest to that.

Since the introduction in 1987 of Ely Lilly's Prozac, there has been a massive increase in the number of people taking antidepressants. Withdrawal from antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs, which can be extremely dangerous if not professionally supervised, is among the most commonly treated problem at drug detox centers around the world - in some areas equal to or greater than the problems with heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, and other illicit drugs seen in drug detox situations.

But it's the side effects of antidepressant use, not withdrawal, that cause most of the problems. Here are a partial list of the most common ones listed in the Physician's Desk Manual:

Manic Reactions:

Kleptomania: obsessive impulse to steal

Pyromania: obsessive impulse to light fires

Dipsomania: insatiable need to drink alcohol, alcoholism

Nymphomania: uncontrollable sexual desire in women

Erotomania: excessive sexual desire

Abnormal Thinking

Personality Disorder

Hallucinations

Confusion

Delusions

Amnesia

Agitation

Psychosis

Abnormal Dreams

Emotional Instability

Alcohol Abuse and/or Craving (see Dipsomania above)

Hostility

Paranoid Reactions

Sleep Disorders

Severe Inner Restlessness

Now add to these the additional side effects required recently by the FDA to be added to labels:

Anxiety

Agitation

Panic attacks

Hypomania, or mild state of mania, especially as a phase of a manic-depressive cycle

Suicidality in those under age 18, updated later to include those under age 25

Acting aggressive, being angry, or violent, and acting on dangerous impulses.

These should make any reasonable person think twice about handing out antidepressants, especially to kids and young adults. If doctors, family members and even the patients had taken these seriously, more people would have entered drug detox, and we would have avoided most of the so-called school shootings across America. Because almost all of them are traceable back to the use of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs.

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, PhD, director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, has republished more than 2,300 media accounts on her web site, reporting on the tragedies associated with the new world-wide antidepressant plague.

One study reports that over 200,000 people a year are admitted to hospitals with antidepressant-associated mania and / or psychoses. There are media reports of 47 cases of bizarre behavior, 43 school shootings / incidents (with many more dead and injured), 50 road rage tragedies, 10 air rage incidents, dozens of postpartum depression cases, over 500 homicides, more than 180 murder-suicides, and many, many other acts of violence and rage directly or indirectly related to antidepressants. And these are just the stories Dr. Tracy has collected. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, more cases that go unreported in the media.

A poll of the family members of the injured and deceased would surely discover that a few days of medical drug detox would have been a very acceptable price to pay to save the hundreds of lives of lost loved ones.

Until mankind wakes up to the fact that Big Pharma is dedicated to drugging the entire world, only the few victims who make it safely into a drug detox program will survive.